Rare example of lost language found on stone hidden 2500 years ago

This could change our understanding of the mysterious Etruscan civilization in Italy.

The ancient Etruscan stele was recycled 2500 years ago for use inside the foundation of a temple, which suggests that it is quite old. The stone is about 4 feet tall, and would once have stood as part of a sacred display.

Mugello Valley Project

A closer look at the Etruscan writing on the stele. After it's cleaned, researchers believe it will be very readable.

Mugello Valley Project

Researchers examine the stele, which is covered in letters and punctuation marks that have yet to be deciphered.

Mugello Valley Project

The ancient Etruscan civilization, whose great cities dotted the west coast of Italy between 2800 and 2400 years ago, was in many ways the model for ancient Greece and Rome. Etruscans lived in city states with sumptuous palaces, beautiful art, and a complicated social structure. But we know almost nothing about their daily lives, in part because most of their writing was recorded on perishable objects like cloth or wax tablets.

For that reason, a new discovery made by the Mugello Valley Archaeological Project could be revolutionary. At a dig outside Florence, a group of researchers have unearthed a massive stone tablet, known as a stele, covered in Etruscan writing. The 500-pound stone is 4 feet high and was once part of a sacred temple display. But 2500 years ago it was torn down and used as a foundation stone in a much larger temple. Hidden away for thousands of years, the sandstone stab has been preserved remarkably well. Though it's chipped, and possibly burned on one side, the stele contains 70 legible letters and punctuation marks. That makes it one of the longest examples of Etruscan writing known in the modern world.

Scientists believe it will be full of words and concepts they've never encountered before. Almost all the writing we have from Etruscan civilization is from necropolises, massive tombs that the wealthy elites used to bury their dynastic families for generations. So a lot of the vocabulary we've gleaned comes from what are essentially gravestones, covered in rote phrases and praise for the dead. This new stele could reveal a lot about Etruscan religion, and possibly the names of the god or goddesses worshipped at the city.

Jean MacIntosh Turfa with the University of Pennsylvania Museum, Philadelphia, said in a release:

Inscriptions of more than a few words, on permanent materials, are rare for the Etruscans, who tended to use perishable media like linen cloth books or wax tablets. This stone stele is evidence of a permanent religious cult with monumental dedications, at least as early as the Late Archaic Period, from about 525 to 480 BCE. Its re-use in the foundations of a slightly later sanctuary structure points to deep changes in the town and its social structure ... Apart from the famous seaside shrine at Pyrgi, with its inscribed gold plaques, very few Etruscan sanctuaries can be so conclusively identified. A study of the names of the dedicants will yield rich data on a powerful society where the nobility, commoners and even freed slaves could offer public vows and gifts.

Turfa refers to something about the Etruscans that made them notorious in the ancient world—and even today. Etruscan civilization was socially stratified, but far more egalitarian than its Greek and Roman neighbors. Slaves could often became free people, and women were in many ways equal to men.

Etruscan women participated in athletic events, drank wine, socialized publicly with men, and even learned the art of war. Often, they participated in athletic events naked, just the way men did at the time, riding horses and throwing spears bare-breasted. In ancient Greece, commentators called Etruscan women slutty, and considered it morally reprehensible that they were allowed to drink and talk with men other than their husbands. In Greece and Rome, women were rarely permitted to drink, nor did they eat with men.

Despite their distaste for the naughty ways of Etruscan women, Greek and Roman thinkers admired the Etruscans, and Etruscan architecture and political structures were incredibly influential.

What we know of Etruscan religion suggests that spirituality was very important in daily life, and that their monarchy was a religious one. Etruscans were polytheistic, and two of their foundational deities were a woman called Vegoia and wise child called Tages. The newly discovered stele will no doubt reveal more, and it will be translated by University of Massachusetts at Amherst classics professor Rex Wallace.

Given how much the Etruscans influenced the development of western civilization, any chance to learn more about their world is an incredible opportunity.

Listing image by Mugello Valley Project

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